A very Wellcome trust

Prof. Sir. Mark Walport, who directs one of the world's largest medical research funding philanthropies, visited Israel recently.

Prof. Sir. Mark Walport 390.
(photo credit:Judy Siegel-Itzkovich)

It has been a galloping ride since Henry Wellcome’s 1853 birth in a log cabin in
the American Wild West, graduation from Philadelphia Pharmacy School, work as a
traveling salesman of tree-bark remedies, move to England and partnership in an
English pharmaceutical company that evolved into fourth largest in the world.
Before his death, Wellcome was made a knight of the British Realm for
contributions to his adopted country.

Today, the London-based foundation
established in his name when Wellcome died 76 years ago finances medical
research and other projects to fight disease, promote health and spread
understanding of science. With its 550 employees and an endowment equivalent to
some $21 billion, Wellcome Trust is a powerful engine promoting healthcare
advances in Britain and globally, especially in the developing world.

For
the first time since he became head of Britain’s largest independent charity,
Wellcome Trust director Sir Prof. Mark Walport recently visited Israel, touring
research and medical institutions for a few days and even seeing a cousin who
lives here. The 59-year-old immunologist and rheumatologist was himself knighted
in the 2009 New Year Honors list for services to medical
research.

Walport’s wife is also a physician, and their children are “all
physical scientists, three in England and one studying in America.”

The
professor had an active clinical practice, and his own research career, focused
on the immunology and genetics of rheumatic diseases. But when he was made
Wellcome Trust’s director, he decided to give up work with patients and in the
lab because of lack of time.

Last in Israel over two decades ago, Walport
also delivered the Henry Cohen Memorial Lecture of the Jewish Medical
Association UK, which promotes links among Jewish health professionals in that
country and between the UK and Israel. He was invited to Israel and accompanied
during his tour by University College London emeritus professor of
immunopathology David Katz, who is a frequent visitor and fluent in
Hebrew.

“Henry Wellcome certainly was a talented character with a
colorful and amazing personal story,” Walport told The Jerusalem Post in an
interview during his visit, and his life has been documented by photos and
biographical information amassed by Wellcome Trust. “Sir Henry didn’t live a
lavish lifestyle; he spent his money going around world and collecting
information on themes such as the history of human health. He saw very clearly
the need for rigorous science. He also excavated in the Sudan and commissioned
archeological digs because of his passion for archeological
finds.”

Wellcome was born in the forests of Wisconsin to his father
Solomon, a farmer and member of the Second Adventist (anti-alcohol) Christian
church and a devout Quaker mother. As a boy, during expeditions to nearby Indian
burial mounds Wellcome discovered a Neolithic stone arrowhead that sparked a
lifelong interest in traditional ways of life.

When Henry was eight, his
father’s potato crop failed, forcing the family to travel for weeks by covered
wagon to Minnesota with others to protect each other from the
Indians.

When he was 13, Henry left school to work in his uncle Solomon’s
store, where he was a physician and prepared medications with mortars, pestles,
bottles of chemicals; it was there and accompanying his uncle on his rounds that
the boy’s interest in medicines and doctoring was aroused. After 38 Sioux Indian
chiefs were hanged following an uprising when the white men took their land,
Wellcome became a longtime sympathizer and even supported the Indians
financially.

At the age of 17, he went to Rochester, Minnesota, where he
worked for his uncle’s friend, Dr. William James Mayo, later one of the seven
founders of the famed Mayo Clinic, who sent Henry to study pharmacy in Chicago
and then Philadelphia. After peddling medicines and making his own, he joined a
large New York pharmaceutical company named Caswell Hazard & Co, and then
McKesson and Robbins to promote their newly-introduced gelatin-coated
tablets.

This led to Wellcome’s search for Indian remedies in South
American rainforests, from where he brought back botanic samples for testing. He
also found new sources of quinine from tree bark in the Andes. His articles in
American and British pharmaceutical journals on his expedition resulted in
exchanges of letters with an old classmate, Silas Burroughs, who eventually set
up with him London pharmaceutical company Burroughs- Wellcome & Co., which
became one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world.

A member
of wealthy social circles, Wellcome continued to give charity, but he had a
tragic personal life, having a single child, a sickly son sent as a toddler to
live with foster parents, and separating from and finally divorcing his
wife.

Wellcome had no surviving direct descendants.

After his
death at 82 in London, the Wellcome Group – later becoming the Wellcome Trust –
was established in 1936 under the instructions of his will and endowed by his
pharmaceutical fortune.

“His will specified that the company would be
owned by charitable trustees who would be given a broad mission to fund research
to improve human and animal health,” said Walport. “We strive to embed
biomedical science in the historical and cultural landscape, so that it is
valued and there is mutual trust between researchers and the wider public. From
the beginning, we funded research in medical history and in medical and science
museums, galleries, the British Museum, London’s Science Museum and more. Just
recently we sponsored a large museum exhibition about the brain.”

With
the enormous possibility of development in chemistry, bacteriology, pharmacy and
allied sciences, “there are likely to be vast fields opened for productive
enterprise for centuries to come,” Sir Henry wrote as his last will and
testament.

Five trustees were appointed to use income from the capital to
advance medical research and understanding of its history.

And so it
went.

The Trust owned Wellcome Foundation Limited, the pharmaceutical
company, which introduced a variety of blockbuster drugs including Zyloric
(1966), Septrin (1967) and Zovirax (1981), the hugely successful cold-sore cream
that became the world’s first billion-dollar drug. Wellcome’s pharmaceutical
giant merged with Glaxo, and the resulting pharmaceutical giant eventually
settled down as GSK (GlaxoSmithKline) after a merger of GlaxoWellcome PLC and
SmithKline Beecham PLC.

Henry Wellcome’s name disappeared, but it remains
in the powerful Wellcome Trust.

“Our vision is to achieve extraordinary
improvements in human and animal health. In pursuit of this, we support the
brightest minds in biomedical research and the medical humanities,” according to
Walport. Wellcome Trust focuses on supporting outstanding researchers,
accelerating the application of research and exploring medicine in historical
and cultural contexts. We believe passionately that breakthroughs emerge when
the most talented researchers are given the resources and freedom they need to
pursue their goals.”

Wellcome Trust does not conduct any medical
research; instead, it provides the funds to worthy researchers. While Walport
admires Israel’s high-level medical research, Wellcome Trust does not fund any
of it, he said.

“Most of the hundreds of research projects that we
finance each year are in the UK, and only 20 percent globally. As Sir Henry
focused on the developing world, most of that money goes to places like
sub-Saharan Africa and Vietnam, but not to advanced countries like Israel,” he
explained. “Israeli medical research is very good, but there is also very good
research in other parts of the world,” said Walport, who in addition to meeting
top people at Jerusalem medical centers also visited the new Galilee Medical
Faculty in Safed.

Asked about the ongoing efforts by certain extremist
groups in academia pushing for an academic boycott of Israeli institutions of
high learning and research, Walport declared: “We believe in the importance of
scholarship. We at the Wellcome Trust would never be involved in such a boycott.
We are apolitical.

A small number of people can make a lot of noise. I
have no time for such things.”

Discussing the trust’s financing
activities, he said: “We fund a wide array of research into how genes affect
health and disease and work to ensure that this knowledge leads to new ways to
diagnose, treat and prevent illness. We support research to improve
understanding of how the brain functions and to find improved approaches for
treating brain and mental health disorders. Some of the most important research
discoveries we have funded involve mental health, which in the scientific world
in general does not receive enough attention. One has to understand the
functioning of the normal brain before studying the badly malfunctioning brain,”
Walport continued.

“We also fund quite extensively ‘orphan drugs’ that
affect a small number of people.”

Other major fields that receive the
trust’s financial support are the search for new ways to prevent and treat the
bacterial, viral and parasitic diseases; investigating development, ageing and
chronic disease; connecting environment, nutrition, climate change and food
security; and maximizing the health benefits of genetics and
genomics.

The trust “wants to speak to the public about science. The
communication of science is also changing,” he concluded.

“Research must
be made public and be free within six months of publication.

The trust is
completely independent.

Nobody – including the government – can put
pressure on us on whom to finance. It is all objective.. We are very fortunate.”